An application or code may include multiple processing stages, which may be sequential. Bottlenecks can form in different stages or portions of the code where, for example, processing occurs more slowly than the processing by one or more of the other processing stages, or otherwise takes longer than expected, delaying or preventing processing by those other processing stages. Application improvement typically focuses on reducing the largest bottlenecks, which yields the highest return on investment. Performance measurement systems monitor and record information about the operation of a system, such as by logging the progress of messages through an application or code, and can be used to further examine, study, and ultimately improve on bottlenecks in the code. Example information that is often logged/recorded by such systems includes data indicative of the occurrence of an event, such as when a processing of a particular message began or was completed by a particular processing stage, and time information about when that event occurred. Traditional logging mechanisms generally impact the performance of the underlying application being monitored. For example, the performance of a monitoring system may impact the performance of the application/system being monitored due to the operations of the monitoring system using/competing for the same resources, e.g. processor/CPU, memory, etc., as the application/system being monitored. In other words, monitoring an application, which is typically done to improve application performance, can have a detrimental effect on the performance of the application being monitored, i.e., a performance penalty. The performance penalty is often referred to as the “observer effect”. The monitoring, which may adversely impact the application being monitored, may include one or more of collecting data, recording the data, and/or reviewing the data. Therefore, it may be desirable that a monitoring system operate efficiently and with minimal impact on the operation of the application/system being monitored.